Israel has admitted that its forces fired on a car that was carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed by the IDF along with six members of her family as they were attempting to flee Gaza City on January 29, 2024.
Hind was the only survivor of an initial attack on the vehicle and was surrounded by six dead family members as she spent hours on the phone with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS) pleading for help. The PCRS waited until it had authorization from the Israeli military to dispatch an ambulance to the area and send it along a route provided by the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
Despite the coordination with the IDF, once the two Palestinian paramedics arrived, they were fired on by Israeli tanks and killed. Hind was still alive after the blast that killed the paramedics and was speaking on the phone with her mother, but the PCRS lost contact with her shortly after. Nearly two weeks later, after the IDF withdrew from the area, the body of Hind, her six family members, and the paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, were recovered.
Israel admitted that its forces fired on the car, which, according to Forensic Architecture, was riddled with 335 bullet holes, and the ambulance, when announcing it was launching a criminal probe into the killings. The admission is significant since the IDF previously claimed its forces weren’t in the area during the attacks. It also initially denied coordinating with the PCRS to dispatch the ambulance.
“Following review of the findings and due to alleged failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance, it has been decided to initiate a criminal investigation of the incident by military police criminal investigation division,” the IDF said, according to The Guardian, which noted IDF investigations into the killing of Palestinians typically don’t lead to convictions.
The IDF also said it was launching a probe into the March 23, 2025, massacre of 15 medics and rescue workers near Rafah, southern Gaza. The IDF initially claimed its forces fired on a vehicle that was “advancing suspiciously” and that it didn’t have emergency lights, but that was contradicted by a video that emerged and showed the rescue workers arriving in a vehicle with emergency lights on before Israeli soldiers began firing on them.
The Israeli military said that it would not launch a probe into the April 1, 2024, massacre of seven World Central Kitchen workers, which included one Palestinian, one American-Canadian dual citizen, three citizens of Britain, one Australian, and a Polish citizen. The aid workers were bombed as they were traveling in three cars, also along an IDF-approved route. One by one, an Israeli drone struck all three cars as survivors of the initial strikes switched vehicles, until they were all dead.
“The IDF decision is wrong and is painful for all of us,” Jose Andres, a celebrity chef who founded the World Central Kitchen, wrote on X in response to the news.
“There was no excuse for their attacks on our team. There is no excuse for any attacks on any humanitarians. We will never ever forget our friends, our heroes, who were killed in Gaza. They lost their lives trying to feed hungry people. We will never stop fighting for truth and justice for them, for their families, for all humanitarians,” Andres added.
